Sunday, September 19, 2010

Rainbow Potluck! It's so intense!

RAINBOWPOTLUCK!

Yesterday we had the most magnificently beautiful, fun and delicious potluck ever. It was amazing. Our last potluck was a "dumplings potluck," which was also tasty, but was a seriously beige meal. We all know the adage to "eat the rainbow," and those drab plates full of (tasty) dumplings got us to thinking about a more vibrant rainbow party.

Each guest was pre-assigned a color of the menu to represent. We were shooting for a complete "double rainbow," meaning a sweet and a savory in every color and we almost made it. Truth be told, we erred on the side of savories, which was just perfect. Isn't this just a glorious display of color and beauty!!?? You can see I even bought color-coordinated fizzy fruit juices at Trader Joes. Because I am a rainbow-loving dork.

Here we are, all lined up in reverse-o rainbow order, from Violet through to Red... most of us representing the color of the dishes we brought. So much party spirit, it was truly awesome. I guess maybe we are all rainbow-loving dorks!

RED! I made a 1 1/2 batch of the almighty delicious Borscht from Voluptuous Vegan. Quite a few folks at the potluck hadn't ever had borscht before, and this fantastic recipe has a way of making everyone into a convert. If you haven't ever made this before, give it a try - it comes together in less than an hour, it's full of beans and veggies and nutrition, and it's crazy beautiful. Seriously, this stuff is red.

For our red sweeties we had bowls of fresh strawberries and raspberries. Mmmmm!

For our sole orange dish, Nikki brought this amazing "Annatto Infused Coconut Stew with Bell Peppers and Corn." Beautiful, decidedly orange, and delicious! I'm pretty sure she made this recipe up, and it was great!

Yellow was well-represented with some mighty deliciousness. Alana made this crazy good mac & cheeze, from the VegNews recipe. I am a bad vegan who doesn't really like nutritional yeast all that much, and so I was totally stoked on this recipe. Not too "noochy," and smooth and creamy, and... yellow! I had heard about it, but hadn't ever made it before, and now I'll definitely make it when I'm in the mood for some old school comfort food.

Also representing yellow were Hanna's adorable and delicious mini cornbread muffins with maple frosting. She used coconut oil in the frosting, and the coconut flavor with the cornbread (complete with little kernels of corn) was a glorious combo.

Josh brought these perfectly beautiful and totally scrumptious mini lemon bundt cakes (complete with lemon syrup, which was poured on top). Bundt cakes are special, and lemon cake is already my favorite kind of cake ever, but mini lemon bundt cakes turn out to be the most fun of all!!

For Green savory, I made a batch of fresh bruschetta, using the final harvest of Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes from our garden... Just like regular bruschetta, but with ripe green tomatoes. Yummy!

Representin' for GREEN on the sweetie side was Sophia, who created this total show-stopper: Basil Coconut Lime Ice Cream. Holy Wow, Batman! Unexpected flavors that resulted in a magnificent harmony! It was unusual and new, but not so exotic as to be confusing or weird. And, beautifully green!

Rose busted out the big bucks and splurged for a mess of beautiful blueberries. Lest anyone get confused, she decided to spell it out for us. BLUE! Ha ha, I love it! The cake and cuppers were chocolate, with a simple frosting and fresh blueberries. It was a great combination! The fresh fruity-ness of the blueberries with the light chocolate cake was a perfect. And blue! Blue food is not so easy!

Erin was another brave soul, heading forth fearlessly into the realm of blue food. Because she is a genius mastermind of food chemistry, she did all sorts of research into using red cabbage water with different food combinations to result in blue or purple foods. These were pupusas stuffed with refried beans... dyed blue with the cabbage water. She said that as she cooked them they transformed from one shade of green to blue, back to a more greeny-blue. Very exciting. Even the refries inside the pupusas were blue, which was a glorious feat. And, by the way, totally YUMS.

Accompanying the pupusas was Erin's purple cabbage dish, meant to be heaped on top of the pupusas. She had a fancy name for it, but I don't remember it. My fancy name for it was "yummy!" This dish was all carefully turned blue, until she added the dressing, which was acidic and turned the whole thing purple. Apparently this is part of the magic of red cabbage. Although it wasn't what she was shooting for, it ended up just perfect, because without this we would have had a pretty much purple-ness potluck. Which would have been sad.

The Lemon Family has had a full plate, what with a broken ankle, ankle surgery, a rented wheel chair - oh, and a toddler too! So, rather than making their lives more stressful with more cooking, they cleverly stopped by the newly opened Cinnaholic (up in Berkeley) and brought "the clouds of the rainbow": CINNAMON BUNS. My most favorite naughty indulgence of all time. Evidently, Cinnaholic makes all sorts of weirdo specialty flavors, but the Lemons brought the tried and true classic, and they were delicious. And cloud-like. Plus, I was floating around on clouds with a belly full of cinnamon roll goodness.

Finally, I made a big rainbow salad... because it's always great to have a big fresh salad at a potluck. I used red cabbage, kidney beans, red tomatoes, carrots, orange cherry tomatoes, yellow-orange tomatoes, raw corn, cucumbers, and watercress (all over a big bed of lettuce). Also, you can see my high-end construction paper table decorations!

Yes! Many pairs of rainbow socks were in attendance! Little Stevie Wonder is wondering when some rainbow scraps will fall to the floor so she can gobble them up.

More rainbow socks! There were rainbow tee shirts, rainbow earrings, and all sorts of great outfits. Seriously, this party had me bouncing around with giddy joy and feeling so much love and gratitude to have such a fun group of friends. (pic by Alana)

People even brought along rainbow party decor, because our friends are AWESOME.

Little Baby G. is pretty much summing up how much fun we were all having, with his big smile and his orange tee. (pic by Alana)

Here's me in my special rainbow Snoopy tee shirt with the Official Party Snuggle Bug, our dog Snoopy. (pic by Alana)

One more parting shot of the whole spread in all its glory! (pic by Alana)

33 comments:

omg, Amey...I am even more in love with you than I already was, and am SO BUMMED to have missed this amazing potluck! It looks like you had an amazing time though, and managed a full rainbow regardless! I must and will come to the next potluck. Let's plan it soon! :)

If you go to World Veg Fest, may I suggest going on Sunday rather than Saturday? I'll be working the VegNews booth Sunday from 10-2. However, if you do go Saturday, would you maybe want to meet up for lunch or something?

Mastmind might be taking it a bit too far...I was more like a mad scientist :)

Your pictures turned out better than mine! It's so intense! I loved the construction paper and color coordinated beverages, they made everything that much better. Oh, and the cabbage dish is called Curtido.

SO PRETTY! I think I would faint of happiness if I walked into a room like that. The salad looks especially scrumptious- that would be great to bring to any potluck, gloriously rainbow themed or not. :)

I am planning to spotlight and feature throughout the month of November cookies that vegans can enjoy for the Holidays. These cookies are all made by my blogroll vegan friends.

I would like to include you as one of my blog guests for that month.

Every 4 days I will highlight one of my vegan bloggers from my blogroll with one of their best holiday cookie recipes. I will highlight their blog on my blog for 4 days.

I will post the written information they sent me for the month of November for 4 days. Then I will highlight another blogger friend. Once I have highlighted you, you then need to post it on your blog sending your blogger friends towards my blog to see your guest post.

Make sure your recipe is not complicated.

If you are interested to join me on this month of great vegan or raw cookie recipes please email me all the information I have requested by October 20th.

Your entry must be in writing and sent to me via email. I need you to send me a photo of yourself and a photo of your family. In your summary tell me a little bit about yourself, where yo live, your marital status, your career and of course your recipe complete with a photograph of your cookies.